30.11.17

Meet the man who deactivated Donald Trump’s Twitter account

Early this month, a former Twitter employee deactivated President
Donald Trump's Twitter account on his last day of working with Twitter.
At first, Twitter explained that the 11-minute deactivation had been
an error, but later revealed it was a third-party contract employee who
worked for Twitter’s Trust and Safety operations team in the San
Francisco area. He had been on the job for about four months and on his
last day of work, he deactivated Trump's account.
The identity of the contractor has now been revealed. Bahtiyar Duysak
revealed himself to TechCrunch. He spoke to TechCrunch in a town in
Germany and explained how things happened.
Duysak describes the event as a mistake. He said he had a wild time
in America and was tired sometimes so he made a mistake. He went on to
apologize and said he is not concerned about what happens next if there
is further investigation of the incident. He hasn’t broken any laws.
He said: "I didn’t hack anyone. I didn’t do anything that I was not
authorized to do. I didn’t go to any site I was not supposed to go to. I
didn’t break any rules."

Duysak, a twenty-something with Turkish roots who was born and raised
in Germany, was working as a contractor for a fixed term for the last
part of his stay in the U.S. under a work and study visa. In addition to
his role at Twitter with Pro Unlimited, other assignments had included
stints in monetization at Google and YouTube via another contractor,
Vaco.
At Twitter, Duysak had been assigned to customer support as part of
the Trust and Safety division. This team receives alerts when users
report bad behavior, including offensive or illegal tweets, harassment,
someone impersonating another person and so on. The team performs triage
on complaints to determine what further steps, if any, should be taken.
His said his last day at Twitter was mostly uneventful. There were
many goodbyes, and he worked up until the last hour before his computer
access was to be shut off. Near the end of his shift, an alert came in.
The alert was from someone reporting Trump’s Twitter account. As a
final, throwaway gesture, he put the wheels in motion to deactivate it.
Then he closed his computer and left the building.
He said he never thought the account would actually get deactivated
because Trump’s account was essentially protected from being deactivated
over Terms of Service violations. In June, Twitter had explained why
Trump's account could not be deactivated. They said some tweets that
seemingly violate its terms of service are nevertheless "newsworthy" and
therefore in the public interest to keep up. So, though Duysak set the
wheels in motion to deactivate Trump's account, he never thought it
would actually happen.
However, several hours later, the panic began. Duysak tells us that
it started when he was approached by a woman whom he didn’t know very
well. According to Duysak, the woman said that she had been contacted by
someone asking about Duysak in connection with Trump’s Twitter account.
After a moment of disbelief, he said he then looked at the news and
realized what had happened.

Although Duysak was hailed as a hero by many people, he says he
hasn’t felt like one at all. He’s been pursued by the media, which have
been aggressive in contacting family and friends. Duysak’s legal
representative confirmed that the FBI is not investigating him at the
moment, although Twitter has apparently attempted to get more
information from him. Duysak has chosen not to reply.

He has left the United States and is now back in his home country,
Germany, where he returned at the end of his visa period. He said he's
coming out now to speak to the media because he wants to get it over
with and live a normal life.
He said: "I want to continue an ordinary life. I don’t want to flee
from the media. I want to speak to my neighbors and friends. I had to
delete hundreds of friends, so many pictures, because reporters are
stalking me. I just want to continue an ordinary life."
He said the pursuit has been relentless: journalists have contacted
the university where he studied, his places of employment, his friends,
and his family. His family has shut down various social accounts to
avoid the contact.
"I didn’t do any crime or anything evil, but I feel like Pablo Escobar," he said, "and slowly it’s getting really annoying."
These days, Duysak said he isn’t likely to take another tech job
anytime soon. More likely, he’ll be looking into finance or other
related field. "But I love Twitter," he said, "and I love America."